


Reckoning

by hellcsweetie



Category: Suits (US TV)
Genre: 7x10, Angst, F/M, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-16
Updated: 2020-04-16
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:27:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23689918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellcsweetie/pseuds/hellcsweetie
Summary: After Donna kisses him, Harvey follows her.
Relationships: Donna Paulsen/Harvey Specter
Comments: 7
Kudos: 15





	Reckoning

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place immediately after the end of 7x10. It's slight-AU from there.

Donna’s been home roughly twenty minutes, hasn’t even changed out of her work clothes yet, when she hears pounding on her door. She already knows who it is - well, theoretically there are _two_ people who could be angry at her door right now, but somehow the tone of the knocking doesn’t seem very British.

In the time it takes her to emerge from her bedroom and reach the door, the pounding has been repeated and Harvey’s voice has come through her door. “Donna, I know you’re in there,” he calls out in what sounds like the exact limit between conveying his anger and being disrespectful to her neighbors.

She finally reaches the door and opens it. “I-“ is all she can get out before Harvey all but barrels through her and into her apartment. The act surprises her so much she needs a moment, eyes wide, stunned by the door, before she can lock it and follow him.

“Sit,” Harvey commands - yes, commands. She takes a deep breath, aware that he has a right to be angry.

“Harvey, I don’t think we should talk about it right now,” she tries, arms crossed protectively against her chest. 

“For once, Donna, I don’t give a shit what you think,” he snaps, finally turning to her, full of self-righteous rage. 

Now this is a little much. “Excuse me?” she drops her arms, half surprised by his outburst, half offended by his tone. 

“You did what you wanted to do regardless of how I’d feel about it, so now it’s my turn,” he elaborates and his tone stings. She glares at him and he glares right back; they stay in this stand-off for a minute before guilt eats at her and she concedes, squaring her jaw and walking past him to her couch. 

He follows her and sits down, and seems to deflate a little. “What the hell were you thinking, Donna?”

He sounds defeated, disappointed. It’s not like Donna planned to kiss him, but clearly her doing something so reckless was hard on him. Not just because of the act itself, but because it shattered his persistent illusion that she’s perfect and balanced and in control at all times. It shattered this notion that she’s known for a long time now is a lie.

“I wasn’t,” she shakes her head, then stops. “Or, at least, I wasn’t _planning_ on doing it.”

“Then why did you?”

She sighs, suddenly exhausted. This conversation is clearly going nowhere. She doesn’t know what to feel, can sense embarassment and remorse mix with anger and resignation in her gut, a weird cocktail of reactions to kissing the man she has stood by every day of her life for the past fifteen years. 

“Harvey, it’s been a long day, _please_ just go home.” Donna doesn’t often beg - in fact, she very rarely does so, certainly not with Harvey. But tonight she is willing to beg. She feels her insides churning and her brain ready to explode, and she doesn’t know what will come out of her if it does.

“Donna,” he snaps, then clenches his jaw, takes a breath, “I’m not leaving until I get some straight answers.”

She scoffs right in his face. “That’s rich.”

“What’s _that_ supposed to mean?” he cocks his head, tone heavy with sarcasm. 

“It _means_ ,” she leans forward, “that I’ve been trying to get _straight answers_ from you for _years_ , Harvey. We have never, not once, had a conversation about this that’s been open and honest and more often than not that’s been because of you, so do _not_ think you can just come here and treat me like I’m the problem.”

She’s slightly out of breath by the time she finishes but she can see it takes him aback a little. Never one to back down, though, he squares his jaws and his shoulders, gearing up.

“Alright, Donna, then lead by example.” He has his poker mode on, he’s clearly trying to bait her. She shouldn’t fall for it, certainly knows better. But she is so fucking done with this she can feel her body thrumming with the desire to just say it. 

“ _Fine_.”

“Why did you kiss me?”

“Louis came to my office earlier and told me that Sheila Sazs is getting married. He said he was devastated because he felt like he was losing the love of his life and that he was going to spend the rest of his life regretting not making a move. It got to me.”

It felt weird to admit it out loud. She’d never said that to anyone, not even to Rachel. Not even to herself, really. It’s a little surreal that the first person to hear those words was Harvey. She feels a slight burn of shame because yeah, she may be unapologetic and she knows there are good reasons for her to feel how she feels and she knows it’s not her fault, but... It‘s not easy admitting failure. It’s not easy to admit that, despite the fact that she is a beautiful, smart, extremely interesting woman who could have practically any man she wants, despite the fact that it’s been literally over a decade, she is still hung up on him and can’t move on.

Harvey, in the meantime, doesn’t seem to have noticed her inner turmoil, because he just frowns. “Why?”

A beat passes where she doesn’t know if he’s being purposefully obtuse or if he is really that desperate to cling to his idea of what they are. 

Donna looks at him incredulously, widens her eyes pointedly, shakes her head a little. It registers.

He blinks once, twice, the panic she has always seen in him evident in his eyes. That gives her a perverse sense of satisfaction because it serves him right to be panicked. He wanted to talk about it, didn’t he?

He swallows, recomposing. “And when you said you just had to know...?”

She takes a breath. Her throat constricts suddenly, like she’ll burst out crying, but she just breathes again. 

“You really want me to answer that,” she goads him to buy herself time.

“I _really_ do,” he fires right back, tone back to self-righteous and it does the trick, she’s emboldened. 

“Alright, Harvey. I kissed you because I had to know if I was in love with you. And it turns out I am,” she states plainly and a little more quickly than she usually would, lest she loses her nerve. “And I’ve been dealing with this feeling, with this- _thing_ for years, always trying to swallow it, always afraid to let it show because I knew you weren’t ready to deal with what this means, but I can’t anymore. I can’t, because I thought that some day things would finally change, all the flirting and the looks and the drinks would finally amount to _something_ but they didn’t and I don’t even know _why_. And when I told you I wanted more you looked so terrified that I might mean _us_ that I made it seem like it was just work, but it’s not. It’s good but it’s not enough. But before I could do anything about it you were with Paula and things got out of control and I just _snapped_ , Harvey, and I kissed you. It wasn’t a great thing to do, I know that, but it was all I _could_ do and I’m _not_ gonna let you guilt me for the one time in my fucking _life_ I decided to throw caution to the wind because you’ve been doing that for _years_ and it’s always me picking up the pieces afterwards.”

When she finishes her rant she’s trembling slightly from the adrenaline. She wasn’t planning on sharing quite this much but once she started talking it was like the cork came off and everything spilled out of her, too fast to stop.

Harvey’s face is bubbling with something she can’t quite name, doesn’t know if it’s anger or more panic or what, but it doesn’t look good. _Fuck it_ , she thinks; this time she really does not give a fuck.

Suddenly Harvey frowns and shakes his head. “This is just such fucking _bullshit_ , Donna.”

His response is so far off the rails she can’t even be angry.

“What.”

“You love to pin it all on me when, really, it all started with _your_ rule,” he begins, tone full of blame. “All those years ago you told me we had to put it out of our minds and never mention it again if we wanted to work together and that’s what I did! And now you wanna tell me that you kissed me even though I have a girlfriend and it’s all because of _me_? Because, surprise, Donna, I was only doing what you _told_ me to do!”

“ _My_ rule? My rule? You really wanna make this about that?” she asks indignantly and Harvey has the nerve to _nod_.

“Where was my rule when your hand wouldn’t let mine go the night Jessica left, huh? Where was my rule on all those other nights, all the drinks and the innuendos that never led to anything? Was it my rule that made you backtrack on fucking ‘You know I love you, Donna’? Because if I remember it correctly, you told me point blank that you think I’m amazing but you don’t see me like that, or you don’t want more, or you don’t _something_ which I can’t be sure of because you never had the nerve to finish your goddamn sentences when it comes to me. So don’t try to pretend like this is all you being respectful of some long-forgotten boundary I set literally over a _decade_ ago because it’s not, Harvey, it’s just you being a _coward_.”

He stands up, probably without even really meaning to. “What did you just call me?”

She follows, not wanting to feel minimized by the change in stance. “That’s right, Harvey. You can hide behind my rule all you want but the truth is you’ve been toeing the line for a long time now, always getting as close as you possibly can without actually crossing it and _you know it_. In fact, that’s why you’re dating your _shrink_. You want someone who will understand you like I do and give you all the comfort of familiarity but without the actual risk, and she’s the convenient substitute.”

Donna feels a pang of guilt as soon as the words are out of her mouth. Despite the fact that seeing Harvey with Paula is literally tearing her apart, she understands he is truly invested in this and isn’t knowingly using the woman. Besides, it upsets her feminist side to reduce a woman to any man’s anything. But she just can’t shake the feeling that she is right this time. Scottie and all others were real, as irrelevant as they may have been, but Paula hits a little too close to home.

“Wow, Donna, you’ve really outdone yourself this time,” he purses his lips and nods slowly, a nasty little smile in place. She hates it, feels like slapping it off his face. 

“Tell me I’m wrong,” she dares him, gritting her teeth to keep herself in check.

“You’re wrong,” comes his instant reply not a second later. But his neck is strained and the fake stability of his voice is something she can see through from hearing it so many times over the years. 

She scoffs. “Please, not even you believe that.” She forces herself to smirk a little, to go head to head with him because she cannot bear to lose this one.

He sets his jaw and stares at her and for one moment, one glorious, terrifying moment, she thinks he might kiss her. Her breathing speeds up and her smirk twitches from the effort it’s taking her to keep it up. Harvey’s eyes are fixed on hers, his chest moving more quickly up and down than it was a second ago. They’re certainly close enough, all he’d have to do would be take one step and he could reach her easily, could take her face or wrap a hand around her neck and pull her in and they could finish what she started in her office almost an hour ago. She wouldn’t even mind that it would be rough and fast, she thinks.

But then the moment is gone and he is just angry and she is just tired.

“Regardless of what you think of my relationship with Paula, she is the person I’m with right now and you shouldn’t have done that,” he says, voice flat and defeated, pretense finally dropped. 

“You’re right, Harvey,” she shrugs helplessly. She won’t apologize for what she did because that would entail regretting it and she can’t, not when she’s spent the entire day feeling like her insides are crawling up the walls of her body and that kiss was the one moment of respite from all that. But he is right. “Is that what you wanted to hear?”

“Goddammit, Donna,” he breathes out, shaking his head, lost. His hand loosens his tie a little and he averts his eyes. 

He’s looking at her door, she’s looking at the kitchen. They’re both facing opposite directions but still close enough to touch and the spacial dynamics here are tripping her up a little.

Suddenly, Harvey sighs heavily and walks towards the entrance and out the door. He doesn’t say anything and neither does she. 

Donna doesn’t know what to make of this whole thing. It was a lot, a lot more than she thought she was willing to give, but it’s unclear whether that’ll be all. It occurs to her that Harvey never shared much back; he didn’t tell her if he felt anything from the kiss, or if he wants more with her, or anything, really.

She kicks herself mentally for letting him get away with it as usual, but then again, tonight was never going to be the night in which he’d open up. So many other moments had gone by, moments in which they’d both been single, close, _happy_ , and he hadn’t made a move...

She looks around her condo. She’d initially thought about having a glass of wine before bed to calm her nerves, maybe watch an episode of something, but now it’s pointless. She presses her lips together, gathers the courage to turn off the lights and make her way to her bedroom, and prays that this still feels like the right call in the morning.


End file.
